It’s an important reminder that, for all the problems of the present moment, this is, in many ways, the best of times for the world when you take a global and historical perspective.

But you can also see right here why we’re watching some unprecedented ecological crises unfold on the planet. The human species isn’t new and people have been altering the natural environment for a long time, but there are many more people alive currently than has traditionally been the case and the scale of present-day economic activity blows everything in the historical record out of the water.

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